On Tuesday this week, two teams of six girls from Year 10 in Edgbaston took part in The National Enterprise Challenge Final (TNEC).

TNEC is an inter-school enterprise competition and the challenges set are tailor-made real-life business challenges. In March the teams were given the task of designing a new range of flip flops for ‘Gandy’s Flip Flops’. Founded by two brothers who were orphaned in the 2004 tsunami, ‘Gandy’s Flip Flops’ design and sell footwear bearing quirky designs; a percentage of the company’s profits go towards helping fellow orphans in developing countries.

The two teams from EHS were the winners and runners up of the challenge set by TNEC back in March 2014. The winning team was made up of Laura Clark, Millie Franks, Ashlyn Glennon, Bethany Lucas, Meena Samra and Isabel Tozer and the runners up team consisted of Sofia Browning, Jordan Coleman, Sioned Gill, Hannah Lait, Ita Rot and Rosie Swani.

The finals were held at Trentham Gardens in Staffordshire, on Tuesday 1 July 2014. Amongst the judges were businessman and former Dragons’ Den TV star Theo Paphitis, Magician Ben Hanlin from ITV2’s Tricked and one of Gandy’s founders, Rob Forkan.

There were over 100 schools at the final and the girls fought hard amongst very stiff opposition. Unfortunately, neither of our teams won this year but this was a very good learning opportunity for the girls and we are immensely proud of them.